Hopeless millennial or a senior having moments?

Burt's Eye View

Burton Cole

Features Editor

bcole@tribtoday.com

I chanced upon this happy news reading a newspaper article in which researchers rate millennials as hopeless when it comes to basic life skills.

I thought I had life skills down pretty well. The truth is, I don’t have life skills; I have a wife.

If there was no Terry to tell me what to do, a search party probably would find me expired in my easy chair with an empty water bottle at my elbow and an unfinished game of solitaire blinking from the laptop perched on my knobby knees. There’d be holes in my T-shirt and flies circling my socks.

Why? Because I would have become so absorbed in the solitude of my computer screen, I’d have forgotten to eat.

It’s the way we hip youngsters are.

The generation dubbed as “millennials” were born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, which makes them roughly 15 to 35 years.

According to my birth certificate — back then, records were recorded with chisel and hammer — I belong to the gang known as “baby boomers.” Boomers hobble in at age ranges from 53 to 73. I’m nowhere near tripping over 73, but I do confess to enjoying my senior discount at McDonald’s.

But I can’t be as old as the calendar claims. Listen to what researchers found out about millennials:

Young adults are great at conversing online but because they spent their formative years glued to screens, they are incapable of small talk, solving problems, thinking critically, or even cooking and changing a tire.

Except for the glued-to-a-screen childhood, that sounds like me. The main feature on our immobile phone was a rotary dial, and for quite a few years, we didn’t own a single television set.

But swept up in a wave of youthful living, now I carry a smartphone everywhere. I break out in hives if forced to commit small talk, I’d rather text than call, and I’d avoid all conventions, weddings, business meetings and other senseless commotions except that I’m often foiled because of my lack of problem-solving skills to escape them.

I can and have changed tires, including once in the rain. A pretty girl was involved, which explains that. Young guys are suckered into lots of stupid acts when pretty girls are involved. Old grizzled guys just nod their heads and say, “Phone’s over there. Call your boyfriend and whine to him about your stupid tire. I’m sittin’ right here where it’s warm and dry.”

I used think I possessed pretty decent culinary skills but events of a few days ago corrected that delusion as well.

I’d fired up the grill and had a set of kebobs sizzling over the flames. Savory scents of roasting peppers, onions and marinated beef wafted through the window screens, tickled my sweet wife’s nostrils and lulled her outside. Just not soon enough.

I’d placed the kebobs in a sort of a wire basket press and set the metal basket on the grill. The basket was unclipped so before I flipped it on the grill, I reached in to grab the metal clasp, and…

OUCH!

I’d misplaced my critical thinking.

Now I am back to sitting in front of a screen, talking to no one while I tap out this text with a blistered finger.

It’s time to give up my senior discount at McDonald’s. Obviously, I’m not that old. I’m just another hopeless millennial. My life skills say so.

— Jump in Cole’s senior moments fountain of youth at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.